Tag Archives: Thailand

It’s a moment of deep despair when you realize your bus/plane/train seatmate is not exactly who you would’ve chosen to share space with for seventeen hours.

It happened to me for the first time on a plane flight to Europe. Midway through the flight, my neighbor bent her head over as far as possible and started scraping her scalp with her finger nails. I could hear the dry skin ripping off, not to mention see it falling out of her buzz cut to the floor in an imitation snow scape. Every once in a while she’d stop to clean out her fingernails before continuing.

I was a shy, awkward fourteen year old unsure how to overcome the language barrier and communicate my discomfort with this personal grooming habit. So a few hours later when we landed, I entered Europe with one pant leg coated in her scalp scrapings.

Some seatmates aren’t quite as squirm-inducing, they’re just needy. Like the Jamaican man I sat next to on a 14-hour flight from the US to South Asia. He’s a nervous flyer and usually uses the in-flight entertainment system to avoid a panic attack. Unfortunately (for both of us) that system in the plane was temporarily broken. He’d lost his distraction from fear and turned to me for a replacement.

He let that be known right away, “I usually just turn on a movie to distract myself. But we’ll talk and maybe I won’t notice.”

He then proceeded to ramble. At first it was fairly interesting – about Jamaica and his work in green technology. But then it got awkward. He started telling me about his divorce, his ex-wife and how he still loves her and the stress it’s been on their kids. How he feels inadequate as a father – that he’s not giving enough time and energy to parenting.

For some reason, I tend to be a person people open up to easily. Strangers tell me random personal stuff all of the time. But this went above and beyond. He was just trying to distract himself and ended up telling me way more than I bet he even remembers.

With all these examples of what not to do, I never expected to be “that seatmate”.

But minutes after boarding a recent flight, what felt like the beginnings of a massive head cold hit me like a truck windshield splatters a bug. Much coughing and sneezing ensued. I tried to cover up as much as possible – but in cramped quarters there’s only so much you can do. My seatmate politely tried to keep her disgusted facial expressions pointing away from me.

Then they served dinner and I got a lovely, but spicy, curry dish.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of spicy curry as head cold relief – let me just say it removes your need for a decongestant rather quickly.

So I sat in my seat, trying to sniffle politely and discreetly wipe my running nose. But it was making me cough more. So I did what is completely and horrifyingly rude in South Asian culture. I blew my nose in public.

Right now, I’m sure that lovely Indian lady is writing a horrified blog post about the rude American seatmate she had to sit next to for six long hours.

That’s the goal I set before I went on vacation. For some people, adventurousness equals vacation – but not for me. I like my comfort zone and build a new one quickly when traveling. I wanted to challenge myself out of that comfort zone.

So I went zip lining.

The company I went with picked me up for my jungle flight, along with five other passengers. We arrived at the “base camp” – which was in a beautiful location.

Zip Lining Local

I was given a hair net, helmet and the harness that would keep me from careening to my death. (Who are we kidding here? In the case of harness malfunction that helmet isn’t going to do squat.)

Ready to Zip Line

I was the only one signed up for the short “flight plan”, so in the comfort zone of every homeschooler, I was the only one in my group with two guides. One guide gave me a safety speech, but his English was… garbled. I understood “we’ll do everything” “cut fingers off” and “sit down”. I hoped I’d pick up the rest by osmosis watching him as he zip lined ahead of me.

The one phrase I heard throughout the day was “sit down”. They say it very calmly and nonchalantly as if you’ve just arrived at their house for high tea. As if sitting down normally results in hanging in mid air. But it’s their way of explaining to you how to put yourself in the position of entrusting your life entirely to this clip…

Trust your life to me...

As you lower into the sitting position, the guide still on the platform with you gives the zip line a jerk upwards that sends you off. It’s like you’re flying. Except that I can’t take my hands off the harness, even though I know my added white-knuckle pressure is not going to save me if something snaps…

After three exhausting, stressful weeks trying to get my visa renewed (more on that later), I headed off to Thailand for some vacation time. I knew I needed a chance to unwind, but it turned out the “unwinding” was more like a loaded spring going off.

And I was just still in the airport. Wandering through hallways singing softly under my breath, squealing in delight at finding pleasures I’d forgotten exist and taking pictures of random things I found funny. Like…

Bathroom flowers

I love that Thai’s value decorating and beauty. There are flowers and flower arrangements everywhere. These beauties were in the bathroom in the airport.

What's missing?

This is the sign declaring the presence of bathrooms… which I needed desperately. What strikes you as odd about the available options?
I ended up using the disabled…

Thank you, America!

Not a fan of greasy whoppers in the US, I felt unusual happiness when happening upon a Burger King in the airport. I don’t think anyone’s ever ordered a whopper meal with quite so big a grin on their face as I did. I added bacon to it… just to anger both sides of my adopted family back in India (beef and bacon – fabulously enraging combo…). My stomach is still trying to recover itself.